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on may 30, 2024, the "2024 young doctors taiyuan tour" job fair was held in the ancient county of taiyuan, attracting more than 2,000 young doctors to apply for jobs. a total of 174 employers came to recruit on site, providing more than 3,000 high-quality jobs. (visual china/photo)

peng hui, a phd student in the department of philosophy at peking university, had never thought of becoming a lecturer at a private college. on july 16, 2024, he joined a private second-tier college in zhejiang province, and his one-year job search finally came to an end.

before this, peng hui had submitted nearly 60 resumes to universities. with his bachelor's and master's degrees from beijing normal university and his doctorate from peking university, he had a little confidence in himself at the beginning. he applied for positions in all universities, from 985 universities to ordinary undergraduate universities, as long as they matched his field. but most of his resumes fell into the sea. "except for zhengzhou university, no other 985 and 211 universities responded."

in fact, there are many doctoral graduates with similar experiences. as of the end of august 2024, the topic of "doctoral job hunting" on xiaohongshu has received more than 30 million views, and "anxiety" and "still unemployed one year after graduating from a doctorate" have become the most frequently appearing copywriting.

a phd in engineering who graduated from a 211 university wrote on june 16: "i have five papers, three of which were in the top of zone 1, two in zone 2, and two were highly cited, but i still haven't found (a job)." he only sent his resume to ordinary first- and second-tier universities, "i don't even dare to apply to 211 universities."

why is it increasingly difficult for doctoral students to find jobs in universities? chen xiaoyu, a professor at the school of education at peking university, explained to a southern weekend reporter that although the number of job demands in the academic labor market is also increasing, its growth rate is slower than the growth rate of doctoral graduates.

there are always people wandering outside the narrow gate leading to universities. on december 19, 2023, the ministry of education’s press conference mentioned that the main destinations for doctoral graduates are still universities and research institutions.

"hard currency"

peng hui said that if it was two years ago, his advisor would have doubted his choice, and might have said something like "i have trained you at peking university for so many years, and you went to a second-tier university." but when he reported to his advisor not long ago, the response he got was, "it's good to have a stable place that you feel is good."

regarding the setbacks in job hunting, peng hui analyzed that he had too few papers, with only one in an international core journal. he compared the situation in the previous two years and found that if a doctoral graduate from the philosophy department of peking university or a 985 university had one or two core journals, it would be enough to enter a 211 university and get a lecturer position. but this year, with the same background and number of papers, "first-tier universities and above may not be very interested."

in his opinion, the vast majority of ordinary phd students only have one or two papers, and they inevitably feel a bit "humble" when looking for jobs. only those phd students who have enough papers or have the "hat" of talent may be in a slightly better situation.

when papers became the "hard currency" for job hunting, peng hui actually regretted putting all his energy into completing his doctoral dissertation. the final draft of his doctoral dissertation was 300 pages long, which is considered long for a doctoral dissertation. if he could do it again, he would spend more time and energy on publishing small papers. "perhaps, at least i don't have to be as passive as i was in the past year."

but this is just a "disadvantage" reason that peng hui came up with. in fact, the classmates in peng hui's teaching and research department when he was studying for a doctorate at peking university were in a similar situation as him. they all got jobs at ordinary first-tier or second-tier universities, and the best one among them was heilongjiang university.

peng hui has been following the school's recruitment situation since he joined the company, and he found that the situation changes very quickly. for example, there were some "weak phds" from unknown schools in southeast asian countries in the same batch as him, but in august 2024, a doctoral graduate from a top 985 university in china was rejected and did not even have the opportunity to interview.

this tragic situation is not an isolated case. lin jia is a 2024 phd graduate in design from a 985 university in shanghai. during his doctoral studies, he published two sci papers and claimed that his academic qualifications and academic achievements "exceed the median of phds in the same discipline."

in the six months from october 2023 to april 2024, lin jia submitted more than 30 resumes to domestic 211 universities and ordinary undergraduate colleges. as of july this year, she had only participated in two university interviews and did not receive an offer from any university.

since she wanted to enter a university, lin jia decided to apply for a postdoctoral position to give herself a transition period. the task during the transition period was also arduous. she needed to "roll up" the national project in the next two years and strive to publish an article in a top journal.

supply and demand

the main reason for the increasing difficulty in finding a phd candidate is the imbalance between supply and demand in the academic labor market.

according to data released by the ministry of education, since the implementation of china's higher education "enrollment expansion" policy, the number of doctoral students enrolled has increased from 19,900 in 1999 to 83,900 in 2017. since then, the number of doctoral students enrolled has begun to grow at a rate of about 10,000 per year.

in 2018, the ministry of education, the ministry of finance, and the national development and reform commission jointly issued the "guiding opinions on accelerating the construction of "double first-class" universities", which proposed to moderately expand the scale of doctoral students, accelerate the development of doctoral professional degree graduate education, and vigorously cultivate high-end and urgently needed talents.

against this backdrop, the number of doctoral students enrolled has increased from 95,500 in 2018 to 153,300 in 2023, an eight-fold increase from 1999. the number of doctoral graduates is also growing rapidly, from 60,700 in 2018 to an estimated 125,800 in 2024.

the demand for full-time teachers in colleges and universities is also increasing year by year. according to data released by the ministry of education, the number of full-time teachers in ordinary colleges and universities across the country will increase from 1.6332 million in 2017 to 2.0052 million in 2022.

chen xiaoyu pointed out that although the employment demand of colleges and universities is also growing, the growth rate is slower than that of the supply side, and there are also characteristics of slow growth in high-end demand and rapid growth in low-end demand. specifically, from 2017 to 2022, the average annual growth rate of full-time teachers in colleges and universities nationwide is about 3.92%, of which the growth rate of undergraduate colleges is 2.99%, and the growth rate of junior colleges is slightly higher, at 5.95%, but both are lower than the growth rate of 8.36% of the number of doctoral graduates.

individuals have also felt obvious changes. just two years ago, a senior student with similar research achievements as peng hui joined huazhong university of science and technology. similarly, although lin jia's senior students did not have as many academic achievements as her, they all successfully found teaching positions in 211 universities.

under such changes, universities as recruiters naturally have more say. xu zhiping, a lecturer at the school of public administration of northwestern university, devoted his doctoral research to the academic labor market. in his opinion, the current supply and demand relationship in the academic labor market means that universities will definitely adopt a competitive system when recruiting. therefore, universities do not set many hard indicators, or these hard indicators are just their minimum requirements for a certain position.

peng hui observed that when the recruitment standards of top 985 universities such as tsinghua university, peking university, fudan university and jiaotong university have reached the point where they cannot be raised any higher, ordinary undergraduate universities and some junior colleges have also begun to be picky in the academic labor market. these universities are the job-seeking targets of more ordinary doctoral students in china, so the scope of influence is also wider.

taking the private second-tier university where peng hui works as an example, the school’s 2024 high-level talent recruitment announcement released in early february 2024 shows that the number of doctoral graduates planned to be recruited is 131. as of now, the recruitment announcement released by the school shows that a total of 219 doctoral students have entered the public announcement process, of which about 1/10 are doctoral students from the "c9 alliance" universities (china's 9 top universities).

the difficulty of finding a job in college for phd students is not unique to china. in the book "death of the doctorate: the history of the demise of the american phd" published in 2023 by herb childress, the author tells the story of the "dilemma of young professors" in the american higher education system through his own experience and that of other part-time lecturers: there are fewer and fewer permanent teaching positions, and the situation of temporary teaching staff is becoming increasingly difficult. the job-hunting difficulties of american phd students also stem from the imbalance between supply and demand.

on may 30, 2024, the 2024 "doctor shenyang tour" was launched at the china industrial museum. at this talent negotiation meeting, there were 6,860 doctors from all over the country, and 497 units in the "three provinces and one region" in northeast china provided 8,164 doctoral positions. (visual china/photo)

structural adjustment

guo yingjian, a distinguished professor at renmin university of china, once served as the dean of the school's school of foreign languages. he observed that, at present, almost all "double first-class" universities require a doctorate from a prestigious foreign university, and unless there are special circumstances, it is difficult for domestic doctors to have a chance. secondly, most universities have raised the entry threshold for doctoral applicants. if the first degree is not from a 985 or 211 university, it is almost impossible to escape the fate of being rejected in the first round. in addition, universities are also constantly raising their requirements for the scientific research results of applicants. schools assess the academic level of doctors by the number of papers they publish and estimate their future scientific research potential.

the competition for doctoral admission to universities has not become fierce only in the past two years.

in guo yingjian's impression, the internal competition in the recruitment of colleges and universities had already shown signs in the early 21st century, but 2015 was a landmark node. in that year, the country launched the "double first-class" construction plan in colleges and universities, which made the schools pay more attention to the academic influence and scientific research potential of candidates when recruiting.

when lin jia participated in an interview at a 211 university, he also found that most of his competitors were postdoctoral fellows, "and they had all been postdoctoral fellows for one or two years."

the country is also encouraging universities to expand the recruitment of postdoctoral fellows. since march 2020, the ministry of education, the ministry of science and technology and other departments have issued documents almost every year, mentioning the expansion of the scale of postdoctoral positions and the number of training. on august 26, 2024, the cpc central committee and the state council issued a document, which emphasized the promotion of universities to use postdoctoral fellows as an important source of teachers. previously, this statement was "using postdoctoral fellows as an important source of supplementary teaching staff."

but the transition from a phd to a postdoctoral fellow is just a transitional arrangement.

zou jun graduated with a doctorate from the university of science and technology of china at the end of 2023, and three months later he went to a non-key university in the south as a postdoctoral fellow. now, at the age of 30, he is still single and lives a "996" life between the laboratory and his residence every day.

two days ago, the national natural science foundation of china announced the results of the 2024 selection, and the funding rate for youth fund projects has dropped to about 15%. this made zou jun very anxious, "if you want to be accepted, a person may have to apply six times on average, which means six years."

zou jun explained that according to the school regulations, if he can get a youth science fund project, he can be transferred to a lecturer (assistant professor). there are more than 20 postdoctoral fellows in their research group, and only one or two of them can apply for a youth science fund project. others can be transferred to specially appointed associate researchers if conditions permit, "who are contract employees, scientific research positions, and not part of the teaching sequence." if the assessment requirements are not met at the end of the special appointment period, they cannot be transferred to assistant professors and can only wait for opportunities and look for other jobs.

an article in nature magazine in 2023 wrote that 65% of postdocs worldwide want to stay in academia, but only 20% can get permanent positions. data from the ministry of human resources and social security show that as of 2021, there are still more than 120,000 postdocs in the country who have not left their posts for various reasons.

xu zhiping pointed out that after the first round of "double first-class" construction, many universities gradually entered the stage of intensive development, and the demand for teachers changed from quantitative expansion to structural adjustment.

the so-called "structural adjustment" is to make adjustments based on the future development direction of disciplines. xu zhiping explained that in fact, the employment situation of doctoral graduates in some traditional advantageous disciplines and some emerging disciplines is still good, while for some marginal disciplines, if the doctoral training system and scale do not change much, their doctoral graduates will obviously feel the "chill" of employment.

wang wenli, professor at the school of education of jiangnan university, and others selected the number of doctoral graduates in each discipline announced on the official website of the ministry of education from 2001 to 2020 and conducted a statistical analysis. the results showed that one problem in the discipline adjustment process was that the adjustment of the discipline structure failed to accurately match changes in the labor market.

take agronomy as an example. from 2001 to 2020, the lowest employment rate was for doctoral graduates in agronomy, with an average employment rate of only 86.67% over the past five years. however, since 2001, the number of doctoral graduates in management, education, law, agronomy, and medicine has grown rapidly.

in addition, it should be pointed out that the repeated increase in the threshold for admission to universities is not caused by the reduction of the school staffing during the economic downturn. according to the southern weekend reporter's understanding from multiple sources, the staffing of universities directly under the ministry of education is generally determined by the central organization department, while the staffing of provincial universities depends on the corresponding provincial organization department. moreover, the staffing is not determined every year, but generally only once every two or three years. however, universities may also intentionally control the number of teacher recruitment based on the current situation and expectations for the future. but in general, it is difficult for doctoral students to enter universities, and there is no direct linear relationship with the current economic situation.

"let's go to the company quickly."

the number of doctoral graduates will continue to increase year by year in the next few years. guo yingjian said that in the short term, the oversupply of doctoral graduates may become more serious and the competition to enter universities will become more intense.

as it becomes increasingly difficult to enter universities, more and more doctoral students have to consider other career paths.

after lin jia was blocked from applying for a job in a university, she began to try other options. after communicating with a senior who worked in a large company, she submitted her resume to the company where the senior worked in march 2024 with the mentality of a backup plan and went through the entire interview process.

however, due to the limited number of spring recruitment quotas at the time, lin jia did not get an offer in the end. but since then, her view of companies has changed. during her job search, she talked with her seniors many times, and those who stayed in the academic circle advised her to "hurry up and go to the companies."

lin jia observed that in super first-tier cities, most of the doctoral positions in engineering with strong application in large companies basically have an annual salary of more than 500,000 yuan, and some companies can give 700,000 yuan. state-owned enterprises are slightly lower, generally between 350,000 and 500,000 yuan. "especially in the engineering field with strong application, such as human-computer interaction in design, such as computer, control engineering, vehicle, electronic information, etc."

in fact, in recent years, the employment of engineering phds has also shifted significantly to non-academic fields.

wei lina, assistant researcher at the beijing institute of education, and others found that from 2017 to 2022, the proportion of engineering doctorates employed in enterprises increased from 27.1% to 32.7%, and the trend of doctoral graduates from "double first-class" universities flowing to enterprises was even more obvious.

on a larger scale, doctoral students are seeking options outside of university.

wang siyao, lecturer at the school of public administration of nanjing agricultural university, and huang yating, researcher at the school of education of zhejiang university, pointed out in the article "why walk out of the ivory tower? - non-academic career choices of doctoral graduates from the perspective of triadic interaction theory" that in the 1980s, more than 90% of china's doctoral graduates were engaged in academic careers. at the end of the 20th century, this proportion fluctuated around 70%. in 2020, it dropped to around 50%.

lin jia then sent her resume to many companies, and finally received two offers from foreign companies in april 2024. the salary was not bad, with an annual income of about 350,000 yuan in state-owned enterprises and 500,000 yuan in private enterprises. although she was tempted at the time, she finally refused.

she explained that her family wanted her to work near her hometown. after hesitating for a while, lin jia decided to continue looking for a job in universities in jiangsu, zhejiang and shanghai.

peng hui also gradually became self-satisfied. "i have a clear understanding of myself. i don't need to think too much about things that i can't do anything about. i just grasp what i can grasp now, which is actually the best."

(at the request of the interviewees, peng hui, lin jia, and zou jun are pseudonyms)

southern weekend reporter wei cuicui and southern weekend special writer lie qitong